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Mid-way through 1974, the Watergate scandal reached a boiling point. Citing executive privilege and the need to shield conversations with advisers to encourage frank discussions, President Richard Nixon refused to hand over to a special prosecutor transcripts pointing to his participation in the cover-up that sank his presidency. The dispute bypassed the usual appeals process and catapulted straight to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on July 8. Sixteen days later, the Court delivered a striking rebuke to presidential power: "neither the doctrine of separation of powers nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more," it ruled, "can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances."

Two weeks later, Nixon resigned.

This past Thursday, the Court tackled another case accusing the president of overstepping his constitutional authority. Though the Court again set limits on the president's powers, this dispute had neither the high stakes associated with Watergate nor was it an overwhelming rejection of presidential authority.

The case, NLRB v. Canning, arose when President Barack Obama made three appointments to fill vacancies at the National Labor Relations Board in 2012. The appointments were made while the Senate was not conducting any legislative activities: it did, however, convene every three days in pro forma sessions. In an unanimous opinion authored by Justice Stephen Breyer, the Court held that Obama overstepped his authority in making these recess appointments.

The Constitution assigned the president with the power to appoint cabinet members, agency heads, and federal judges with the consent of the Senate. The framers also planned for the Senate's long absences from the nation's capital. Limited by the pre-industrial travel times of the late eighteenth century, they allowed the president to make recess appointments while Congress was not in session so that important posts would remain filled. Upon its return, the Senate would have the opportunity to accept or reject these nominations. Recess appointments therefore served as a practical way to prevent gaps in the government's operations. Compared to other provisions of the Constitution, it was relatively straightforward and uncontroversial.

Over the past few decades, however, the Senate increasingly refused to vote on presidential appointments. Unable to reject the president's pick, minority factions within the Senate instead resorted to delays - never actually committing to an up-and-down vote on a nominee in the hopes that the appointment would simply languish. The practice grew in popularity under both George W. Bush and Obama. Both presidents countered the Senate's inaction by resorting to recess appointments, which were originally intended to deal with the Senate's extended absence from Washington, not it's absent-mindedness.

Obama made the selections in response to this breakdown in the appointment process. One of Obama's selections to the NLRB had been awaiting confirmation for about a year. The other two had been pending before the Senate for several weeks. The extended vacancies were a microcosm of the broken appointments process, which had led to many unfulfilled positions within the executive branch.

The Court rejected these presidential attempts to circumvent the Senate's unwillingness to fulfill its end of the appointment process. "We seek to interpret the Clause," Breyer wrote, referring to the Constitution's provisions regarding such appointments, "as granting the President the power to make appointments during a recess but not offering the President the authority routinely to avoid the need for Senate confirmation."

Though the ruling rebuffed the presidency, it included little of the debates over the scope of the president's powers the Court encountered in 1974. Breyer's opinion instead took a narrow approach, focusing on what constituted a true "recess" under the Constitution.

Much of this analysis focused on the Constitution's text, an undertaking made more difficult by the lack of information the Constitution's fathers provided on the subject and the scarcity of precedents to guide the Court. The justices also tried to identify historical patterns in both the Senate and the executive branch to formulate a response.

"We therefore conclude," Breyer wrote, "in light of historical practice, that a recess of more than 3 days but less than 10 days is presumptively too short to fall within the Clause." This conclusion meant that Obama's appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional. It also meant that the Senate could use the pro-forma sessions as a tool to block future recess appointments if its newly adapted parliamentary understanding limiting the use of filibusters to block appointments unraveled in the future.

The Court, however, held that presidents may make recess appointments during both intra-session and inter-session recesses. This granted a broader license to the presidency than the concurring opinion filed by Justice Antonin Scalia, which sought to confine recess appointments only to the inter-session recesses that take place between the first and second year of each two-year election cycle.

The majority also found that a president could make recess appointments not just on vacancies that occur during a Congressional recess but any vacancies that may exist at the time of the recess.

The Court went no further, avoiding the kind of sweeping statements it had made during Watergate. The limited scope of the ruling didn't stop Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, from characterizing the case in a different light, however. The decision, he stated, "is the Supreme Court’s biggest rebuke to any President since 1974, when it ordered President Nixon to produce the Watergate tapes."